Sin Ropas: Three Cherries

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By Steve Lichtenstein

There’s no underestimating how important it is to find the right soundtrack to cooking spaghetti, or any food, for that matter. You find yourself not sure if you want to sing along to something you know well, for fear of rejection from windows or the stove, so you might want something mellow to lose yourself in, but not too lulling so as not to take your mind off cooking. What a quandry. Sin Ropas’ debut fits the bill perfectly. Three Cherries is a calming aural mindfuck, similar to listening an early Pavement album of Bob Dylan covers produced by Nigel Goodrich while taking intravenous LSD. Plus, you’re eating spaghetti. Does it get any better?

Musically, Three Cherries is hard to pinpoint. It almost seems like the album unfolds spontaneously, as if an improvisation. Often, chords and beats are lost in execution, but it doesn’t seem to matter-it works simultaneously in its own sonic abundance and sparseness. “I Found Your Teeth” grumbles along with a snake charmer-like flute line and an occasional drum beat that sounds like it’s being played with paper bags over the sticks. The slow, mesmerizing closer “You’ll Take the Knife Out” lumbers along at a staggering pace, and is as pleasantly creepy as the Halloween score. Even Jamie Lee Curtis couldn’t resist this.

Three Cherries is most mystifying vocally. Lead singer Tim Hurley’s voice is a bizarre force that makes you think he was runner up to be J Mascis. Additionally, you can hear a little bit of Stephen Malkmus and Frank Black tonally, as well as the raw emotion and sincerity of Neil Young. These comparisons don’t even begin to speak to the fact the lyrics are largely unintelligible and utterly abstract when clear.

This is something you’ll likely never here on the radio or at a club. Boo hoo. What makes Three Cherries so intriguing is that there’s a whole lot going on that’s hard digest, and that’s where the fun is.